


The Sleeper in the Valley

by Curlee_Cue



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-21
Updated: 2014-05-21
Packaged: 2018-01-26 00:44:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1668512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curlee_Cue/pseuds/Curlee_Cue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel lies in a bed of grass near a tree in Lawrence, Kansas, where a little boy took his first wailing breath and awakened something biting and desperate within him. </p><p>Metatron was not wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sleeper in the Valley

**Author's Note:**

> What if Cas believed Dean was dead? What if his guilt was too strong to let him see for himself?
> 
> Takes place directly after the end of season 9.
> 
> Title taken from Arthur Rimbaud's "Le Dormeur du Val."

Mortality isn’t a humans-only franchise.

Skinwalkers, werewolves, vampires, too. Demons and witches, black dogs and wraiths. Even Death and God will one day perish. Angels are no exception.

(And for that, Castiel is grateful.)

Immortality isn’t anything angels have ever staked claim to. Not remotely. Their existence is inevitable death, soldiers through and through, ready to cast aside their lives like a growing serpent sheds its skin. It is just one of many steps in the cycle of God’s cosmos. 

The only monopoly humans hold power over is the ability to die naturally. Peacefully rather than in battle. They can close their eyes and float along the lulling waves of sleep in one moment, and find themselves comfortably nestled within Death’s warm embrace in the next. It is one of the more beautiful things Castiel has witnessed.

Castiel remembers the first time. Once, in a city long since buried under sea, Castiel watched from a hollowed out window in a clay-built hut. Humans were less skeptical then, more willing to believe in miracles and the angels that doled them out on occasion. Her prayers had called to him as he’d wandered through the city. Her soul glowed dimly, yet strikingly. It shuddered and fizzled. She had lived a difficult life, one filled with suffering and hardship and a persistent will that had led to nothing but disappointment. 

She had not been a bad person. But God had chosen her as a test, and she had not failed.

For this, Castiel had come. Her death had been imminent, and Castiel longed to see the beauty of a human life devoted unconditionally to their Father. The beauty of her dying breath had come as a surprise.

Castiel had been young, then. Humanity’s first parents had only been dead a few hundred years when Castiel heard the final thump of her heart. The very air around her went still. He gazed upon her weathered flesh, wrinkled and browned from a life laboring under the sun. He looked on in wonder as her soul bloomed and brightened and burst from her chest, shooting up to meet his brothers and sisters at Heaven’s Gates. He stared, confused at the ugly emotion welling up within him at the sight of her lips, curved in what should have been a private smile. 

It was the first time Castiel felt envy, though he did not know it at the time. 

(And for that, Castiel is grateful.)

Castiel thinks about her now, as he lies by a tree in Kansas. 

Metatron was not wrong.

All angels love humanity. Or at least, they did. Before God abandoned them and left them hurt and confused and jealous. Sometimes Castiel understands Lucifer’s motives. Favoritism is a form of abandonment all on its own. 

But Castiel is not Lucifer, and Castiel never stopped loving humanity. If anything, he loves them all the more now that God has vanished. They serve as a constant reminder of both His love and wrath. They are perfectly imperfect; they are free will and passion and emotionally-governed stupidity and mistakes. They are everything Castiel never thought he would have the chance to experience. They have taught him much since Jimmy Novak gave himself to Heaven.

(And for that, Castiel is grateful.)

But they are not the reason he stayed. They are not the reason he disobeyed Heaven and prevented the Apocalypse. They are not the reason he gave his life, betrayed his closest brothers, relinquished an army of soldiers, and placed himself in Metatron’s trap. Even if he didn’t know it at the time.

No. That’s not true. He did know. He always knew.

Metatron was not wrong.

Castiel knows he would have gone on lying to himself until the day he died. He had intended it, had planned on dying in the line of battle defending that which he loves most.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. 

He was supposed to die first.

(And for that, Castiel is not grateful.)

Instead, Castiel lies in a bed of grass near a tree in Lawrence, Kansas, where a little boy took his first wailing breath and awakened something biting and desperate within him. 

New souls are a peculiar, fascinating wonder. They start with a sliver of the mother’s soul. It is a tiny sacrifice, sometimes lovingly, sometimes hatefully given. Always distinctly different from the first nub that gave it life.

Castiel remembers the first time he felt that baby’s soul, the moment it completed its transformation into the creature that would forever change his course. He remembers the sensation that struck through him like a reawakening, gasping and invigorated and _seeing_. Like the whole world looked different, only he didn’t yet know how. 

It wasn’t desire, Castiel knows. Not back then. 

Desire came the first time Castiel lay a terrified, thrilling hand upon that shoulder and gripped him tight and raised him from perdition. 

(And for that, Castiel can’t know if he is grateful.)

Castiel has thought about going back. Sam calls for him often enough. The prayers ring of desperation and anger in turn. What Sam could be angry about, Castiel can’t fathom. There is only sorrow and emptiness and more emptiness beyond that. The whole world is a blur, and he can hardly remember his own name.

He can’t listen to Sam’s words. He can’t go back. He can’t see and hear and smell the truth in Metatron’s words. All his words.

Angels were never meant to love. Not the way humans do. Platonically, unconditionally, yes. But never romantically. Castiel has had a few years to admit to himself he’s not like most other angels. Only a blip in an angel’s existence, but enough time nevertheless.

Enough time for Castiel to know that Metatron was not wrong. 

So Castiel ignores Sam’s prayers. He ignores the lifeless body he won’t let himself see, the one given to a soul too beautiful for Castiel. He ignores it all and breathes in the scent of the autumn leaves a little boy once piled together just for the fun of flopping belly-first into and feels tentatively around the edges of his fraying, stolen grace.

Soon it will burn out completely. Naturally. Peacefully. Like the old woman in the clay-built hut. 

(And for that, Castiel is grateful.)

**Author's Note:**

> First spn fic -- woot! Drop me a line on [tumblr](http://sterekmademedoit.tumblr.com/) if you wanna angst together over the season finale.
> 
> *gross hysterical sobbing*


End file.
